We are often developing a number of applications simultaneously, typically
running from the Root directory so we use the Virtual Host functionality in
Tomcat exclusively.  We develop on Windows workstations and our problem occurs
on both Win 2000 and Win XP.  Prior to upgrading to Tomcat 5.5.12, we would put
our web app into a directory (eg d:\wwwroot\test), use the Admin console to
create a virtual host with the appBase pointing to this directory
(d:/wwwroot/test), then create a root context with a docBase of "./" and a path
of "/".  This all worked perfectly.

Since upgrading to Tomcat 5.5.12, we find that this process works as before,
until we restart Tomcat.  Then the application fails to work and the following
appears in the Tomcat error log:

WARNING: A docBase D:\wwwroot\test\. inside the host appBase has been specified,
and will be ignored
16/11/2005 11:29:29 org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext resourcesStart
SEVERE: Error starting static Resources
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Document base d:\wwwroot\test\ROOT does not
exist or is not a readable directory

I can provide a suitable example application for testing if required.